Rating: 
Summary: Wouldn't recommend Barrons...
Review: (...)Do books like this help? When I attended a decent public high school, we were told that outside preparation was a good way to spend a lot of time and money on statistically insignificant returns. This doesn't bother private high school students I've met recently. I don't know if preparation has improved, or if the "cost" side of cost/benefit inhibits them less. Familiarity with the format and grounding in tactics has got to be worth something. I think Lance Armstrong likes to ride the course before the Tour de France starts. His margin of victory is statistically insignificant, but it seems to work for him. In rebuttal to another reviewer's comments: You *can* improve your ability to write essays (assuming there's room for improvement to begin with). I'm coaching a student whose essays just improved dramatically after she studied the tactics recommended by the Princeton book (e.g. add some literary or historical references). Of course some essay topics are easy to get one's teeth into, others are intractable, and we can't tell how she'll feel about the one the test puts in front of her--but she has a better template to work with than she did before. Not bad, eh? I think I tossed this together in 20 minutes or less, with an illustrative reference to sports! I've had more practice than my student, but improvement is possible!
Rating:
Summary: Needs improved editing
Review: Barron's SAT II Writing covers the basic topics on the SAT II. Its essay writing sugesstions are beneficial and useful; however, the five practice tests in the back of the book are flawed. The practice tests contain typos that greatly confuse the reader. In a few cases the book stated the answer as one thing and then had a different answer for the same question in anonther location. After taking the writing test four times (twice on the PSAT and twice on the real SAT II), I feel that many of the practice questions that Barron's offers are not similar to ones found on the test. However, if one really needs help with the SAT II Writing then Barron's will provide limited help; just don't always believe the book is correct. Personally, I prefered Kaplan's guide to the SAT II Writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Probably the best one can do on paper
Review: I bought the 2nd edition of this books. It's very good, but alone it is certainly not enough to prepare you for the test. The first fault is traditionally Barron's -- it won't tell you how to get a scaled score from raw result. The 2nd fault is to do with the fact that it's a book -- a book can't score your essay. I used this book in conjuctions with CB's EssayPrep (3 essay evaluations by real rating people), and it helped a lot -- I'm not a native speaker of English, and I got 740, which I was pleased with. This doesn't mean that the essay section of the book is bad -- it's actually very good -- before doing SAT II Writing, I used it to prepare for the TOEFL essay, and it helped a lot. Also, it's important to actually practice writing the essay on the limited space of paper that you'll be provided during the essay. It's not the same as typing your essay into a computer, and it does hurt your score if you're not prepared. Before spending money on EssayPrep, do however all the practice exercises in this book, as they are good, and useful.
Tiny drawback: the essay form is lined, the real SAT one is not. You may want to try essaying on a non-lined piece of paper.
Otherwise the book is great. It covers very well the questions, and presents difficult questions, as well as easy ones. It teaches you how to solve the questions, and a little smart tactics, not answer-sheet magic. I have found it very well-explained, and logical. I enjoyed the identifying sentence error section a lot -- it seemed to me it provided correct, and detailed explanations.
Sometimes, I felt the more obscure corners of Paragraph Improvement weren't fully covered, but long paragraphs (e.g. TOEFL reading comprehension) were always a little more ambiguous to me. I still think the definitive book on Reading Comprehension, and long paragraph matter hasn't been written yet. P.S. I just wanted to add -- the essay section is very good. I only realised this after I got the chance to compare it with Barron's TOEFL Essay book (I'll review that soon). The author style on writing is very good, and besides teaching you the right things, is in itself a good example of essay writing (what's the point of having a super-authority on essaying explain you how to write an essay in dry, lame, poorly structured paragraphs?). The essay section is quite short, but is certainly filled with useful info, including the paragraph on "narrowing the topic mercifully" -- this single half-page helped me more than all the other essay material I've read.
Rating: 
Summary: Sat 2 Writing
Review: I found that this book was very informative. I especially liked the practice tests at the end as well. I am doing my SAt in October 03 and now feel extremly confident in doing the exam with the aid of this book. The Barrons book for literature is also handy as well!!!! I would recoomend this book to everyone
Rating:
Summary: very thorough
Review: I have always been extremely strong in English, but I ordered this book for review, just in case. While I didn't spend much time with it, what I saw in it was very good. Every section was comprehensive, even the essays (although it is very difficult to prepare for that part of the test). I got an 800 on the SAT II writing (I only took it once, November of my senior year.) I would recommend this book to anyone who is taking the test, whether they struggle in English or already do quite well.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting, easy to understand
Review: I have taken the SAT2 Writing tests for twice. The first time I
did not even prepare for it and thus I got a score that really
disappointed me. This time I took it in the Nov 02 test and I use
this Barron's Writing book. I think it is truly helpful. It
contains every detail in grammar, such as verb tenses, redundancy
and wordiness and some others, which, are really helpful in the
real tests. At the end if this book, there are 5 practice tests!
This is esp the strngth of this book, since there are rarely
writing SAT ref books providing so many practices. I have done
all the practice and got very familiarized with the pattern of
wriring test. If you are not good at grammar or the form of this
test, I recommend you thoroughly read this book and take the
practice tests!! By the way, the essay part is also wonderful!
In this part, I have learned a lot of skills needed in composing
an essay in only 20 mins. It's a great book, hence I rate it
a 5 star!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent test preparation
Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to gain a good score on the SAT II: Writing. Not having a natural flare for writing (especially not in so short a time frame), I rather reluctantly registered to take this test, for I thought it would be necessary for me to display some writing ability to employers, universities, and the like. I managed to gain a score of 760 in this test, which greatly exceeded my expectations. Such a score would not have been possible were it not for the practice which this book gave me, most especially in the essay section. It didn't teach me how to write, but it taught me to use my limited writing skills to gain a great score in this writing test.
Rating:
Summary: Wouldn't recommend Barrons...
Review: The best thing about this book was the section it devoted to the essay portion of the test. It gave great examples of good essays and bad essays, what to avoid and what to exercise when writing your essay. BUT, the review for the other two sections was shotty. It gave decent overviews of grammar, but it doesn't give any practice questions... AT ALL. Only exercises that make you write and are extremely boring. I got a 700 on this test, which is a decent score, but I barely looked at this book because I thought it was just so boring, and I doubt I would have done much better if I did.
Rating:
Summary: Something extra
Review: The book was also very flawed with mistakes ranging from the answer key to anywhere in the text. Plus, people who talked about scores higher than 700 are just lying. This is not possible and this is not the place to brag.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite good.
Review: This book is not only THICK, but it has an in-depth explanation on most things. I would recommend this book, but the essay preparation part isn't that useful at all. You couldn't really 'prepare' for the essay part. The practices at the end of the book are also very similar in the types of questions. Bottom line, a fair, but not excellent preparatory book.
| 
